Meanness is a way of life in Ottawa

Cindy Blackstock knew something was up when officials
threatened to cancel a 2009 meeting on aboriginal child
welfare if she was in the room. So she dutifully sat outside
the Parliament Hill office, watched by a security guard,
while deliberations continued within.

Blackstock is executive director of the First Nations
Child and Family Caring Society, a university professor,
author and recipient of awards for distinguished service
over 20 years in her field. The Ontario chiefs had invited
her to the meeting specifically because she is an expert in
child advocacy.

Baffled by what she terms the “extreme reaction” to her
presence, she filed a request under the Privacy Act and in
due course received a 2,500-page file on herself.

She was astounded by the findings.

Senior officials in Justice and Aboriginal Affairs, she
learned, had cast a broad surveillance net over her
professional and personal life, including her Facebook and
Twitter accounts. Moreover, in notes and emails to one
another, they trashed her in terms that were arrogant,
demeaning and sexist.

“Our girl’s on a roll,” wrote one official.

Another referred to, “Our dearest friend Cindy Blackstock
... ”

Officials passed around her Facebook posts and those of
her friends — including baking recipes — to other
bureaucrats in Justice and Aboriginal affairs.

“ Baking ! What does that have to do with policy
issues?” asks Blackstock.

An official sent an email to nine others about
Blackstock’s appearance at a public event, that said in
part: “Day One opened with the Cindy Blackstock show, a tour
de force that seems to fire up a ready-to-be impressed
audience ... after this clever argument she rattled through
some general statistics (or gave the impression of doing so)
and whisked away to the airport.”

Blackstock recalls being “shocked by the level of sarcasm
and the nasty tone about me by people I’ve never met. These
are officials employed by the government acting in the
context of their official duties,” she says. “It was so
negative and deeply personal — and nobody ever appeared to
ask if it was appropriate.”

When did Ottawa get this mean?

In February 2011, as the Conservatives were about to
celebrate five years of minority government, the Star
interviewed some 30 public officials, politicians, academics
and consultants for their take on the mood in the capital.
Some spoke off the record of an “us versus them” mentality
under Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

At that time, Wesley Wark, an expert on national security
issues, warned that a climate of fear among civil servants
was having “a stifling effect that gathers momentum the
further it works its way down in the system.”

Today, the nastiness is deep and systemic.

Recent interviews with many of the same people show that
lack of civility has become a way of life in Ottawa — from
committee meetings to tribunal hearings to everyday
communications in which civil servants treat groups and
citizens like Blackstock in a manner that suggests they have
been actively targeted for meanness.

Toronto political consultant Patrick Gossage, who worked
for prime minister Pierre Trudeau, argues that society’s
weakest are being hurt the most: “The reduction of political
dialogue (in the interests of) smaller government and saving
money as the only ways to attract votes has exposed a
deep-seated meanness and lack of care for large sectors of
the population that have fallen behind.”

And a number of individuals said that today Ottawa can no
longer be singled out as the only bully on the block.

McMaster University professor Henry Jacek sees contempt
among politicians, mean tweets and inexcusable behaviour
both provincially and federally. Others, inevitably, point
to the turbulence at Toronto City Hall.

“In recent years, both (the provincial and federal)
governments have gotten meaner and nastier,” says Jacek.
“When the politicians get mean and nasty, it brings out the
mean and nasty in the population.”

Conservative commentator Tim Powers stresses it is wrong
to point to Stephen Harper as the fountainhead of mean.
“It’s a popular narrative generated by the Opposition to say
he is mean but I think it’s too simplistic.” Certainly, he
says, Harper is taciturn and hardly a “touchy-feely”
individual. But he cautions against seeing his political
style — it’s all Harper’s doing! — as a question of black
and white.

He refers to the Prime Minister’s involvement in setting
up the Mental Health Commission of Canada in 2007 as “a
significant gesture.” His kind actions go unnoticed. The
public saw the state funeral for former NDP leader Jack
Layton, Powers says, but not the decisions made by the PM
leading up to it.

Others disagree. An Ottawa consultant, who fears the
consequences if his name were to be used, argues that
Harper’s stamp is all over government: “It’s vicious because
there always has to be a bad guy ... The government doesn’t
care about truth. The truth is whatever the hell they say it
is.”

Wark’s view has hardened over the past three years. Thus,
his somewhat facetious summing up: “Ottawa is not a bright
and cheerful town.”

He points to pending actions in the omnibus budget bill,
such as the government’s right to define which public
servants have the right to strike, as “mean-spirited” and
concludes that “there’s a war brewing between the federal
civil service and the government. There’s a daily atmosphere
of mistrust and anxiety.”

And he shakes his head at the treatment of returning
veterans, particularly their problems with the new Veterans
Charter that, according to a study by ombudsman Guy Parent,
fails many returning vets and means the most severely
disabled veterans will suffer financial hardship at 65.

“It’s unconscionable that Harper could ignore his
obligation to the troops,” says Mike Blais, who founded
Canadian Veterans Advocacy. He spoke to the Star the same
week the PM attended Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa —
which honoured, among the war dead, the 158 Canadian Forces
soldiers who have died in Afghanistan since 2002.

“There is so much frustration. More than 150 died and
1,500 were wounded under his watch and he has an
obligation,” said Blais. “Soldiers feel their sacrifice was
not worthy.”

In an email, Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino,
said: “Our government is fully committed to giving veterans
the support they need to lead successful lives beyond their
time in uniform.” On Tuesday, before the standing committee
on veterans affairs that is reviewing the charter, Fantino
said, “I am convinced more can and should be done.”

In another area, NDP finance critic Peggy Nash says
tactics are “just ugly” at Finance committee meetings
discussing the omnibus budget bill three times a week. She’s
not happy that the government chooses to push through
changes to the appointment of Supreme Court judges, health
and safety laws for federal workers and public sector labour
issues within the massive bill, thereby avoiding separate
debate in the Commons.

“It’s beyond ridiculous,” she said. “Procedure gets in
the way. It’s just an irritant to them.”

Meetings are sullied by derisive comments aimed at those
perceived to be unfriendly to government. “When I see how
the parliamentary budget officer (Kevin Page) is treated, I
cringe,” says Nash. “He’s been right (on his projections)
but (Conservative MPs) tell him he was wrong or he doesn’t
know what’s he’s doing. They try to imply his numbers don’t
make any sense. It’s very condescending ... They’re bully
tactics.”

Blackstock certainly feels officials are bullying her.
Her child advocacy organization and the Assembly of First
Nations filed a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights
Tribunal in 2007, arguing discriminatory funding for
aboriginal children across Canada. After a bumpy ride,
hearings have wrapped and a decision is expected late next
year.

“But that wasn’t personal,” says Blackstock, who was
stunned to find that, apparently as a result of the
complaint, officials kept personal files on her. “I didn’t
file the complaint as an individual.”

The AFN and Blackstock’s group amended the tribunal
complaint on child welfare in late 2012 to include the
retaliatory action taken against her by the government. Says
Blackstock: “Complaints should be allowed with no fear of
retaliatory action.”

Why did they intrude into her life? They twice applied
for and received her Indian status information (she’s a
member of the Gitksan Nation in B.C.), copied an entry on
her Facebook page from a 12-year old aboriginal child and
wrote about an event she attended in the Australian desert.
By her count, a total of 189 senior officials from two
ministries gathered information.

The Star asked the justice ministry why “senior
officials” had repeatedly accessed her personal accounts and
made derogatory remarks about her. (“Justice Canada takes
Canadians’ right to privacy very seriously,” said a return
email. “The privacy commissioner has generally accepted that
the department is entitled to access publicly available
documents, including Facebook, and to collect and produce
relevant information in court.”)

In another email, Aboriginal Affairs denied there had
been retaliation against Blackstock and stressed information
was reviewed as part of its due diligence where it pertained
to issues before the tribunal.

Blackstock says there was a telling moment last July on
the child welfare case. A justice department paralegal who
had visited Blackstock’s Facebook page at the instruction of
the lead government lawyer was asked why she hadn’t informed
her subject. She blurted out: “But she’s on the other team.”

Blackstock would like to know: which team would that be?

But this meanness pales when compared to the sad case of
Rémy Beauregard, president of the Montreal-based
International Centre for Rights and Democratic Development.

Overnight, on Jan. 8, 2011, he died of a massive heart
attack at age 66. The distinguished human-rights defender
had finished a second long day of tense board meetings with
members who had disapproved of his decision to award three
grants to Palestinian groups. He returned home and told his
wife, Suzanne Trépanier, he was exhausted, and went straight
to bed at 9 p.m.

She believes her husband died because he was bullied by
officials, including the centre’s chair, Aurel Braun, and
board member Jacques Gauthier. In the Star, she called it
“psychological harassment.”

Dissension over the past year had centred on the grants
and Beauregard’s frustration that he couldn’t get a copy of
his own performance evaluation that had been sent to Ottawa
without applying under the Freedom of Information Act. The
centre, an arm’s length organization, received $11 million
in annual funding from the federal government.

“You’ve got to leave, you’ve got to leave,” she recalls
telling him that last evening. “He looked so pale and tired.
He was stressed out. I told him, ‘I’m afraid for you.’ ’’

In a telephone interview, Braun said the “unfounded
accusations are unfortunate. They are completely unfair.
There was no stress and he was treated with civility. I
acted professionally ... I don’t want to talk about a person
who has passed.”

The matter was scrutinized repeatedly in the months
following Beauregard’s death. No wrongdoing was found on his
part and the standing committee on foreign affairs
recommended an apology to his wife and family.

The government declined and no apology has ever been
made.

In 2012, then Foreign Affairs minister John Baird
announced the centre would be closed.

ldiebel@thestar.ca, @linda_diebel

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